How Uber’s engineering model inspired me to increase customer acquisition for our app by 6% weekly
So lately, we have ran into a questionnaire based problem, and here is the User story overview:
Ali discovered about Mint from Internet
Ali likes to be the part of rockstar Mint Family as he likes Mint’s vision on bettering cities and urban climate infrastructure
Ali headed towards for Sign Up for Mint App on mymintrewards.com/signup
Ali successfully subscribed to beta version of Mint App as an early adopter
Weeks later, Mint team emailed Ali for onboarding on Mint’s App via Google Play download link
Ali successfully downloaded Mint App
What will Ali see?
Now this is what which has made us to stop and operate for past 5 months and we ended up scratching our heads — i.e. how to keep wait-listing still live (persistently storing data somewhere which we can be use later to allow user to login) till we finish launching our pilot technology. This wasn’t an easy task as we need to figure out a way somehow that can keep both things up-and-gun running in parallel till our other teams finish setting up plans and actions on how to operate and signing up MOUs with initial Brands and Companies.
The Problem
Problem is that, if a user has already signed up for Mint account via website than how we can unlock user’s Mint account for beta app using the same data? i.e. converting website form data into real-time user data. What will user see when he first time open the app?
Nested Problem
Wait — here’s an another problem. We can’t directly ask for some sort of unique auth key (say password, OAuth, etc.) which can also be used later to grant access to user to login into Mint app. The reason was we have some time launching the full-scale app till we fulfill our technological resources so it can be able handle strong continuous traffic and we also want to minimize latency so we can drive excellent in-app user experience. This was the main purpose of attaching subscriber form on the website so we can start onboarding users with moderate traffic giving us space to breath so we can make better informed decisions. Even we built form using no-code SaaS app to save our time plus resources and abstract out all the integration layers so we can really focus on the Business instead.
In a nutshell, our goal is to convert that incoming form responses and turning into real-time relational database for allowing users to access their Mint account via our app.
So how we solved the problem?
Unified SignUp Model (USL)
We taken inspiration from Uber’s USL model derived by their excellent engineering team (a round of applause for them). We thoroughly studied their model and learnt how Uber solved their Login/SignUp problem for their food, delivery and riding apps seamlessly using USL pattern and successfully built an all-in-one smooth in-app experience whether you are a new user or just returning back. This was designed specially for Uber Eats, Uber Ride, Uber Delivery and other Uber products specially those requiring faster database communications for speedy transactions. We observed that somehow Uber had been experiencing the same problem within its multiple apps which we were facing at Mint and i.e. making Business Logic layer decides where to navigate user whether he/she is a completely new user or already signed up via mymintrewards.com/signup or just returning back — this was quite similar to what Uber was also experiencing. We replicated the model and it worked.
Let me give you a high-level overview of how we altered Uber’s USL according to our Business Logic and built a seamless onboarding experience for Mint App.
The Final Solution
You open the app — you will be asked to enter your email or phone number. Once you entered, our Business logic layer will decided where to navigate you and you will automatically be taken to where you belong. Boom, done. We made it simple for you. We dropped all those fancy fields, buttons and screens to minimize the end-burden on front-end client and improve the overall user experience enabling users quickly access their Mint account within 2-steps. Usability done right.
Nobody wants to wait — Be quick, Be seamless
Today, end-user looks for value. He didn’t care about all of those underneath things going around. He didn’t care about your technical debt. He has nothing to do with it. The only goal end-user wants to achieve from a successful product is the solution to his problem aka value — real value. This should be his first word of mouth when first time opening an app — Woah!. I believe achieving this couldn’t be hard as technology today allows us if you rightly putted all the puzzle pieces together. The only thing you need to look for is converting Business model into actual solution — seamless, smooth and quick.
Seeyou, again.
